FATE is an extended regression suite on the client-side and a means
for results aggregation and presentation on the server-side.

The first part of this document explains how you can use FATE from
your FFmpeg source directory to test your ffmpeg binary. The second
part describes how you can run FATE to submit the results to FFmpeg’s
FATE server.

In any way you can have a look at the publicly viewable FATE results
by visiting this website:

This is especially recommended for all people contributing source
code to FFmpeg, as it can be seen if some test on some platform broke
with their recent contribution. This usually happens on the platforms
the developers could not test on.

The second part of this document describes how you can run FATE to
submit your results to FFmpeg’s FATE server. If you want to submit your
results be sure to check that your combination of CPU, OS and compiler
is not already listed on the above mentioned website.

In the third part you can find a comprehensive listing of FATE makefile
targets and variables.

If you want to run FATE on your machine you need to have the samples
in place. You can get the samples via the build target fate-rsync.
Use this command from the top-level source directory:

make fate-rsync SAMPLES=fate-suite/
make fate SAMPLES=fate-suite/

The above commands set the samples location by passing a makefile
variable via command line. It is also possible to set the samples
location at source configuration time by invoking configure with
--samples=<path to the samples directory>. Afterwards you can
invoke the makefile targets without setting the SAMPLES makefile
variable. This is illustrated by the following commands:

./configure --samples=fate-suite/
make fate-rsync
make fate

Yet another way to tell FATE about the location of the sample
directory is by making sure the environment variable FATE_SAMPLES
contains the path to your samples directory. This can be achieved
by e.g. putting that variable in your shell profile or by setting
it in your interactive session.

FATE_SAMPLES=fate-suite/ make fate

Do not put a ’~’ character in the samples path to indicate a home
directory. Because of shell nuances, this will cause FATE to fail.

To use a custom wrapper to run the test, pass --target-exec to
configure or set the TARGET_EXEC Make variable.

To submit your results to the server you should run fate through the
shell script tests/fate.sh from the FFmpeg sources. This script needs
to be invoked with a configuration file as its first argument.

tests/fate.sh /path/to/fate_config

A configuration file template with comments describing the individual
configuration variables can be found at doc/fate_config.sh.template.

Create a configuration that suits your needs, based on the configuration
template. The slot configuration variable can be any string that is not
yet used, but it is suggested that you name it adhering to the following
pattern ‘arch-os-compiler-compiler version’. The
configuration file itself will be sourced in a shell script, therefore all
shell features may be used. This enables you to setup the environment as you
need it for your build.

For your first test runs the fate_recv variable should be empty or
commented out. This will run everything as normal except that it will omit
the submission of the results to the server. The following files should be
present in $workdir as specified in the configuration file:

configure.log

compile.log

test.log

report

version

When you have everything working properly you can create an SSH key pair
and send the public key to the FATE server administrator who can be contacted
at the email address fate-admin@ffmpeg.org.

Configure your SSH client to use public key authentication with that key
when connecting to the FATE server. Also do not forget to check the identity
of the server and to accept its host key. This can usually be achieved by
running your SSH client manually and killing it after you accepted the key.
The FATE server’s fingerprint is:

‘RSA’

d3:f1:83:97:a4:75:2b:a6:fb:d6:e8:aa:81:93:97:51

‘ECDSA’

76:9f:68:32:04:1e:d5:d4:ec:47:3f:dc:fc:18:17:86

If you have problems connecting to the FATE server, it may help to try out
the ssh command with one or more -v options. You should
get detailed output concerning your SSH configuration and the authentication
process.

The only thing left is to automate the execution of the fate.sh script and
the synchronisation of the samples directory.